Just Looking

The Review

Just Looking introduces Jim [James LeGros] and Mary [Michelle Forbes], a sweet couple with a 4-year-old daughter who is chipmunk cute. Life has so far been kind: They live in a nice home furnished Santa Fe chic. Their community is intimate enough that they share play dates with neighbors and movie recommendations at the local video store. Jim works as an architect, Mary as a travel agent, so the two incomes mean they have few material desires they cannot satisfy. They are so busy managing the family and chasing ambitions at work that they have not yet realized their relationship ennui.

To shake them out of their complacency are the exhibitionist neighbors Jim spies one evening from his second-story deck. What seems to the viewer as passionate but pretty ordinary, missionary-position sex becomes something more for voyeur Jim. His view through the neighbors’ open blinds makes him question his 10-year marriage to Mary. Can he be happy in a relationship where his wife frequently rejects his romantic advances? Can he limit sexual encounters to a single woman? As camouflage on his perch, Jim crawls into his daughter’s nylon tunnel-tent, becoming a giant version of the organ wanting more attention.

To his credit, Jim first tries to spice things up at home. He rents pornography to get Mary in the mood, but she responds with giggles, not ripping off her clothes. Next, he buys Mary sexy lingerie—which she wears as a good sport—but then he ruins the mood when he gets an incisor caught in the lace. As Jim attempts to reignite their sexual fire, Mary becomes aware of his dissatisfaction, and she too begins to appraise their relationship.

Complicating Jim and Mary’s reevaluation of life are Dave [Marshall Bell], Jim’s womanizing supervisor, and Sherrie [Ally Walker], Mary’s coworker, a woman who prefers the insecurity of casual relationships to what she deems the passionless monogamy of marriage. Dave offers Jim commitment-free dalliances with prostitutes named Wicked Wanda or Delicious Debbie. Sherrie and her new boyfriend Craig [Steven Weber] propose a ménage à trois with Mary as the requisite third.

Since writer/director Tyler Bensinger gives equal time to Jim and Mary, the audience ends up sympathizing with them both.

On the one hand, we can understand Jim’s frustrations as our own relationships have shown us that two people are seldom in complete agreement about anything, including a schedule for sex. Moreover, Jim does not appear unreasonably selfish in his desire for more bedroom excitement—in part because his actions and dress give him a number of nonthreatening boyish qualities. He is inept as he asks his boss for a promotion. He is swimming in clothes that look like hand-me-downs from an older brother.

We also understand that Jim's view through the blinds is misleading, for it shows a couple enjoying sex unencumbered by the minutia of daily life. Jim sees only the acrobatics on the bed, not the more mundane problems of too little money in the checking account or too many phone calls from a nagging mother-in-law. The window frames a fantasy, not the complete picture of his neighbors' lives.

On the other hand, we glance around the house and note that the bathroom is pristine white, and no juice box spills stain the carpet or furniture. Mary obviously keeps a neat and tidy house while raising their daughter, working outside the home, and taking professional development courses at night. If she’s tired and wants to wait until the weekend for romance, we can sympathize with her as well. We are also less likely to commiserate with Jim when we realize the beauty of his wife [for costume designer Jyl Moder cannot completely deglamorize actress Forbes no matter how conservative the eye makeup, no matter how many times white socks get paired with white sneakers].

On the plus side, Just Looking shows the range of LeGros and Forbes, both of whom have depicted much less conventional characters in past roles. LeGros, for example, makes Jim such a charming, good-intentioned husband and father that you cannot imagine him screaming—as he does as gunshot Roach in Point Break—"I'll see you in hell, Johnny!" Forbes depicts a typical exhausted wife and mother, complete with body image insecurities, a far cry from confident producer Dawn Lockard of Swimming with Sharks or counter-culture photographer Carrie Laughlin in Kalifornia.

On the minus side, Just Looking is predictable in its eventual happy resolution. And once the DVD ends, we remember the depressing statistics—that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce and up to 20 percent of married couples live in sexless relationships.

To Own the Movie

Just Looking is out of print, but you can easily purchase a new or used copy from a Marketplace Seller at Amazon US or UK. This copy will be PAL encoded, so it will play without incident on a computer with a DVD drive. It will not, however, play on most US DVD players.

Cross Post

This review also exists at Amazon US.